The House Appropriations Committee approved yesterday an increase of nearly 30% in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget to $10.5 billion for the year beginning October 1.
As noted in this blog, Missouri Republican Jo Ann Emerson proposed an amendment that would have prevented EPA from promulgating a final rule to count indirect land use changes (ILUC) toward a biofuel’s greenhouse gas lifecycle emissions for the purposes of determining the fuel’s eligibility for the Renewable Fuel Standard.
The amendment was narrowly defeated by a 29-30 after the Committee’s Chair, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA), urged the panel to reject the amendment, saying that the Energy and Commerce Committee had informed him that the issue would be addressed in an energy and climate change bill that its leaders are readying for a floor vote in the coming weeks.
“We can’t just have the appropriations committee undercutting everything that EPA is doing to deal with this,” he said. But Rep. Emerson said that ILUC measurements were “way too uncertain right now,” and urged continued study.
Filed under: Biofuels, Cellulosic, Climate Change, Corn, Deforestation, Enviroment, Ethanol, GHG | Tagged: Appropriations, Biofuels, Climate Change, Deforestation, Ethanol, GHG, Growth Energy, ILUC, indirect land use changes, Land Use Changes, RFA, Sugarcane
